The availability of unlicensed millimeter wave (mm-wave) radio frequency (RF) bands is spurring the development of main stream applications that use mm-wave wireless technologies. For example, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11ad standard—also known as Wi-Gig to consumers—promises up to approximately 7 Gigabits per second data rate over the 60 GHz frequency band for consumer applications such as wireless transmission of high-definition video.
Communication over mm-wave frequency bands can be implemented in wireless communications devices by a RFIC package soldered to a printed circuit board of the device. The RFIC package typically comprises an RFIC chip and an array of non-directional antenna elements used for wireless communications with another mm-wave transceiver.
Unfortunately, mm-wave frequency bands are associated with severe path loss and high inter-symbol interference. To reduce interference and improve communication quality, beamforming techniques are usually used to simulate a directional antenna. Beamforming is typically implemented with an RFIC chip that has phase shifting capabilities of the signal fed to each non-directional antenna array element in order to electronically point the simulated antenna toward a RF signal source. Unfortunately, including phase shifting capabilities for beamforming can significantly increase the size, cost, and complexity of the RFIC chip.
It would be desirable to have a solution for reducing interference and improving communication quality over mm-wave frequency bands that does not incur the size, cost, and complexity disadvantages associated with including phase shifting capabilities for beamforming in RFIC chips.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.